Eurybia's Memory
by Starr Bryte
Summary: Vastra has spent a great many years paying back her debts. She has fallen to the deepest depths and climbed so high to get to where she is now. Vastra has changed, her iron-clad Silurian training softened by Jenny's humanity. But things like sentimentality are anathema when one is born and bred to the tribe of Eurybia. And Eurybia has a long memory. Vastra/Jenny (Character Death)


**AN: **So apparently all my best inspiration for fanfiction comes when I'm either at work, falling asleep or doing the dishes. This was the work of maybe an hour and then I nit-picked it for the better part of a month until now. I've always wanted to do a Vastra/Jenny fic since I saw "A Good Man Goes To War" so here it is. This first chapter is tissue inducing but the rest will get better. I have never liked sad stories and I hated romantic tragedies. But Doctor Who has changed my mind about it because seriously... There is nothing more romantically tragic than a semi-immortal time traveler.

I'm going to try to keep this as cannon compliant as I can and have been doing a LOT of research into this. Any help I can get from fellow Whovians would be a plus! The one good thing about Silurians is that there is so little information about them except for what we see in series so I have a lot to work with. I hope to do them justice.

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**London 1928**

It was raining. Unsurprising for London, but this was a warm, gentle rain. The kind the average Londoner barely noticed, but for the fact that everything smelled vaguely cleaner and what green things grew in that city were substantially greener and brighter.

Vastra noticed none of these. The warm gentle rain felt icy on her hide. The smell of death and smoke and gore had soaked into her senses and would linger for days, maybe for longer, maybe forever. The bright reds of fresh blood stained her sleeves and would remain dyed in the threads of her gi forever.

Her sword was broken and too far from her reach. Vastra didn't care.

Her clothes and composure were ruined by muck and viscera. Vastra didn't care.

If she stayed out in the rain, no matter how warm and gentle, her temperature would start to drop. If her temperature dropped far enough she would have problems moving. If her temperature dropped far enough she wouldn't be able to move at all, a death sentence for a Silurian. Vastra didn't care.

"Are the McIntires safe, Ma'am?" Was the precisely articulated question from perfect lips that dribbled blood and breath that wheezed fitfully.

"Yes." Vastra whispered, feeling as if it were her own lungs that were punctured. Maybe if she stayed like this she would turn to stone like the tales of the gargoyles that perched on old buildings. Maybe they would both turn to stone. Frozen forever in this one moment and, as civilization rose and fell around them, passerby would look and wonder at the tragedy before them. Artists would paint renditions. Authors would speculate. Composers would play long into the night until their fingers bled. It was a pretty thought. A fleeting thought. A human thought. Vastra was too numb to care that a thought so human no longer bothered her as much as it had. It was already too late.

"Then your contract with them is complete and you can be on your way, Ma'am." So reasonable, so practical, her Jenny. Her hands were starting to twitch, the first stages of convulsions but she never let go of her blade. A surge of pride broke through the numbness and it was almost too much to bear. Pride had come too late to soften the blow. Her fragile, human mate who fought with the viciousness and skill of a Silurian born and bred.

"I think I should like to remain here for a spell if it's all the same." She answered, her voice so soft she could barely hear it over the strange roaring in her ears.

"You're going to catch your death if you linger, Ma'am. Go home. Warm up. Collect your payroll in the morning. Her Majesty will be grateful for the rest." There was a slight slurring to the words, a strange sort of steely calm in her voice. Maybe that was why her sword had been able to land the killing blow while Vastra's had snapped so cruelly, a sign of her weakness. A sign of her humanity.

"I can't." She answered, a quavering note of emotion entering her words at last.

"You can." Sharpness. A forcefulness in the command. A steadfast patience in the syllables. She never was this demanding outside, in public, where anyone could see, "You will stand up, Vastra. You will walk to the carriage. You will go home. You will sleep in your bed of furs and blankets until you are warm. You will eat soup and red meat and a petty crook or two on your way to the palace. You will tell her Majesty of these deeds you have done, the good work accomplished in Her name. You will accept her Majesty's gratitude. You will take her purse and you will go back home and live." So practical her Jenny. So forthright and brave. Far too brave for a human.

"I can't." A plea. So childish. She would feel shamed if she could feel anything at all. If she allowed herself to feel anything at all.

"You can." Was the quiet reply the brooked no argument.

"Not without you!" The rasping cry ending in a keen of pure anguish and the light grip she had on the precious bleeding bundle in her lap became clutching and possessive.

"Vastra..." Jenny whispered.

"We were supposed to have years, yet!" Vastra wailed, "Curled up together in the sunlight, your skin so delicate I can see straight through it like rice paper! Follow the course of your blood! Your bones so fragile like a birds I can hold you so easily, carry you so far! Contentment and peace in your very being as I touch you! Love and acceptance in your every breath as you fall asleep! A smile on your lips as I kiss you good-bye! A deep sleep, princess, like fairy tales with no end! That's what I promised for you! Contentment and peace!" Her chest was heaving by then, air coming quick and fast and tasting like horror and pain and nightmares. Her eyes were wide like a wild thing. She wondered, far away in the back of her mind, that if she had tear ducts would this be the part where she would be crying. She always thought humans cried too much, but over the years had discovered that it was simply their way of coping with feeling too much. Like pressing puss from an infected wound, tears flowed to bleed off the infection of their volatile and overpowering emotions.

"But I am content, dear." Jenny answered, her lips twitching up into a fond smile, the kind she smiled when Vastra was being ridiculous, "I am at peace." Her eyes left Vastra's face to stare up at the sky with it's tumbling wealth of gray clouds.

"The sun is hidden, but it's light makes it so dim and intimate. Like the gray moments between sleeping and waking when all I can see is the faint light of dawn and the curves of your shoulder and hip. The rain is so cool and refreshing, I can taste the wind and lightning in it, like when I taste your lips." She closed her eyes for a moment before returning her gaze to Vastra, "I'm in your arms, and home could feel no more welcome than where I am right now." Her hand was shaking badly but her fingers were gentle as they traced the ridges of her frill, trailing down to touch her cheek, "I wouldn't be happy, wasting away in front of you, dying by inches until there was nothing left. I am proud and content and happy to die in battle, side by side with you." She exhaled sharply then turned her head to cough out a wad of fluid onto the mud next to her.

"We were supposed to have longer..." Vastra protested and Jenny snorted.

"My dear, I am over fifty years old in case you haven't noticed. It is by your love alone that has kept me so spry and sheer amounts of grit and training that has allowed me to even pretend to keep up! There has probably never been a death as good or as satisfying as mine!"

"You sound like a Silurian..." Vastra said, the words coming out half laugh and half sob. Jenny smiled and made a choked sound that must have been a laugh for the pained humor that filled her eyes.

"I am what you made me, dear heart." She answered. Her eyes were becoming foggy and vague. Her breathing labored, Vastra could feel the bubbling of fluid in her chest. She lowered her face to nuzzle her cheek, brushing lips over the corner of her mouth tenderly.

"And I." She murmured into the shell of her ear, flaring her nostrils and breathing deeply to get as much of the taste of her scent as she could before death tainted it, storing it in her sensitive olfactory nerves. Jenny's scent would fade from her clothes, from her bed, from her life. But the memory would always be there. Faint, but forever.

"If you see The Doctor..." Jenny trailed off, as if trying to collect her thoughts, Vastra took the moment to gently nip the skin behind her ear, as far down as she could before the high-collared cloth took over.

"The Doctor?" She prompted and Jenny made a small sound of pain.

"If you see The Doctor," She continued, her voice becoming more raspy and faint, "Tell him that all debts have been repaid except the one owed to me and that he should do his very best to repay it or I'll know why."

"What debt?" Vastra asked, a sudden chill crawling down her spine. Jenny smiled that mysterious little smile she had acquired that night in Japan, so many years ago, the smile that was only for Vastra.

"Now that, my dear, you'll just have to figure out for yourself..." She answered. Then her smile disappeared and she stiffened, her chest heaving.

"Jenny? Jenny stay with me! Just a little longer I'm not ready! Jenny!" Vastra pleaded, clutching her close until the convulsions ceased. Jenny locked her gaze to Vastra's as if it were the only thing keeping her drawing breath. The smile came back and she seemed to settle boneless into Vastra's grasp, becoming a dead weight as life began to leave her.

"Do you remember when we first met? It seems so very long ago now..." She mused.

"The Doctor wore a different face then..." Vastra agreed, "But by then it was as if I had known him for so long and yet knew nothing about him at all. I still feel the same way even after all we experienced together... And you... Of all the chance meeting, that I would even glimpse you again much less find you and know you and love you as I do... The Eternals smiled that day, but little did I know it then..."

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**London 1828**

It was the terrible, insistent beeping that woke her up. The proximity alarms were going off, her mind fuzzily supplied, something had breached the outer complex shell. Her cubicle had just started it's automated shutdown sequence and would be at it for quite some time as it thawed her. She was still too cold to really move so she settled back and concentrated on moving the pinkie of her right hand far enough to turn the alarms off. Her third eyelid was still down, casting the world around her in a strange, hazy sheen. The only lights coming from the inner control panels. She blinked a couple of times until it peeled away and she could see the screen in front of her clearly, the writing and images still not making much sense to her sleep addled brain.

Her mind began to piece together what had happened starting with the very basic and working her way up.

She was Vastra, warrior of the Crius Tribe of the Silurian race. Daughter of the Eurybia clutch. She was born with four sisters and five brothers, a larger group of hatchlings birthed before the Great Hibernation. Trained by the most skilled of her elders to fight with tooth and claw and sword and blaster. Trained to protect the tribe from anything that threatened it, no matter what.

She was Vastra and she was awake.


End file.
